Sorting Out The Mess Over The Iranian Arms Deal To Test System`s Resilience

COMMENTARY

December 1, 1986|By WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, Universal Press Syndicate

The Wall Street Journal`s editorial page (among the most interesting in the country) makes a rather unusual point, worth pausing over. The pity of it, says its editor, is that President Reagan didn`t himself order the transfer of funds from the sale of arms to Iran on over to the Contras -- what the hell, he is the commander-in-chief and anybody who has doubts that such powers reside in the commander-in-chief ought to go back and read about when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt transferred 50 destroyers to Great Britain with a stroke of his pen back in 1940.

Goodness, but it really is a mess. And although we hear a great deal about the resilience of the American system, sorting this one out is certainly going to test that resilience. We need to pause over the major questions.

-- And the first of these is a relationship to Nicaragua that simply defies plausible explanation. When last questioned about our embassy in Nicaragua and whether he had considered closing it down, Mr. Reagan said no, it was a very valuable listening post. Quite. And it would have been a very valuable listening post if we had maintained an embassy in Berlin during the Second World War.

The Sandinistas have now, and have had for several years, every right to boot us out of Nicaragua, but clearly they do not do so because they have much to gain from the American imposture. That imposture is that we ``recognize`` a government whose overthrow we are subsidizing. The Neutrality Act forbids making war against a government we recognize.

-- They speak of bad advice given to the president in respect of clandestine activity. But surely the worst advice he has got has to do with his continuing schizophrenia on the matter of the Sandinista government. On the one hand we recognize it, on the other hand we send arms, overt and covert, to the Contras, and, finally, we more or less pledge not to use American armed forces to overthrow that government.

Now, that is simply no way to run a railroad. If there is one thing predictable in international developments, it is that the Contras are not going to amass the power to bring down the Sandinista government. That government will remain in power, probably grow in power, unless it falls from a genocidal coup from within, which is highly unlikely.

The result of it all is that we have suffered years of frustration, and will suffer more; and the Congress of the United States is just perverse enough to ``punish`` Ronald Reagan for the anarchical events of the past year by withholding further support from the Contras.

While this would be a mistake having the effect of ratifying Sandinista control of Nicaragua, that help withheld would have little effect on the future of Nicaragua. Nicaragua needs liberation, not a few dozen hand grenades. Maybe Vice Adm. John Poindexter can steal an aircraft carrier and take care of Nicaragua more efficaciously than he was able to do using a Swiss bank account.

-- On the one hand there are those (like the editor of The Wall Street Journal) who believe that the president has the inherent power to do what was done, on the other hand there are those who say flatly that he has violated the law.

Now, the plea of inherent powers could protect the president in his dealings with Iran, but not in the dealings with Nicaragua -- for the simple reason that he did not know about them, and no one is going to argue that the inherent powers of the executive flow to his assistant for national security affairs giving him license to act without consulting the president.

But on the Iranian matter, much hangs on how we interpret the term ``timely.`` The 1980 act (The Intelligence Oversight Act) provides that the president must ``fully inform the intelligence committee in a timely fashion`` of covert operations. But what does ``timely`` mean? Surely it is a modifier that is the creature of circumstance?

Nobody who counts disputes Reagan`s advising select congressmen of the Grenada invasion only hours or so before its execution -- too late for any leak to affect its success. But suppose that, instead of dropping paratroops into Grenada, we had decided to overthrow its government by infiltration, perhaps a process that would take a year or more?

Would it be ``timely`` to wait a full year until the moment had come to detonate the coup? The case could be argued that to do so earlier would almost certainly jeopardize the operation. Well, then, what if a month before the scheduled flashpoint the infiltration operation was discovered, and the whole venture aborted? Isn`t that the equivalent of what Reagan suffered from in the Iranian affair?

There is fundamental work to be done. By Congress, to write an intelligible law. And by Reagan, to formulate a coherent policy for Nicaragua.